Welcome to The Twelve Days of Christmas – over the next twelve days I am planning to take you on a whirlwind tour of my first year as a blogger. I might have a few problems getting an internet connection when we head to the Alps early next week, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will find a good internet cafe!
So, here we go with the First Day of Christmas – or in my case January 2013.
My very first blog post went out on Tuesday 8th January as an experiment in using WordPress. I had no experience of taking photographs, had never produced a blog before and had no real plan of what I would write about. I was feeling very low as my father had just died on Christmas Day and I needed a new challenge to take myself away from my sadness. The idea of a garden blog was born in those dark days of early January, but I had a huge learning curve to contend with! My first few posts were very short as I struggled to get to grips with the mechanics of WordPress. I had just purchased an iPad mini and all my early photographs were taken and edited on that.
Highlight images from those early posts included:
A beautiful January sunrise.
My Buff Orpingtons in the snow.
Iris reticulata flowering in the greenhouse. This was the first post of any substance and went out at the end of the month, as I started to understand how the site worked and could give more time to the content of my post. I have pots of iris in the greenhouse now that are showing their green tips above the soil – I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will have flowers in January again.
I have also found in my archived garden photographs from January:
Clearly we had a lot of snow that month!
I hope that you will join me tomorrow for a look back at February.
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I am sorry to read about the event that prompted you to start blogging but imagine that doing so was of some comfort. How brave of you to use your iPad from the start for your photos 🙂 I’ve only recently discovered your blog and look forward to getting to know you and your garden better as a new year unfolds.
Thank you so much for your kind comment Anna – I am looking forward to reading your blog too!
Like Anna, I am sorry that you lost your father last Christmas, but in a way your blog has brought life from that death and personal challenges that have made you a stronger person. Well done Julie.
Thank you Cathy – you are right to say that writing this blog has made something positive come from his death. My father was a great gardener and we spent a lot of time together in our various gardens. I am only sorry that his illness prevented him from working with me in this, our most recent, garden. It would have been nice to have had some memories of him here.